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My first tech job was testing software at Hewlett Packard, circa '96-97. One of the projects I worked on was HP's first (I think) digital camera. The hardware t

My first tech job was testing software at Hewlett Packard, circa '96-97. One of the projects I worked on was HP's first (I think) digital camera. The hardware testing was apparently running behind due to challenges the hardware team was having with abrasive qualities of some of the paints they'd chosen, and one day a bunch of us were asked to go help expedite some hardware tests. Every button, latch, and moveable part on that camera was rated to a certain number of presses and uses. A team of folks (which for one day that winter included myself) sat in a room pressing buttons and drawing notches on a sheet of paper until the product failed or qualified. It was kind of eye opening, actually. For weeks afterward I was nervous about whether the next button press on my tv remote was the last :) I'm curious, 16 years later.. How much of this testing is remains so manual? At HP I think the number of products and rate of change in early development made building fixtures to do this sort of thing pretty costly compared to low wage human testers.

kragen 14y ago
Consumer Reports has been doing automatic testing of this kind of thing for decades, so I assume not much.
rtkwe 14y ago
This kind of testing is usually done mechanically now. Much higher repetition, reliable, and cheaper. This sounds like a last minute rush job.
mzs 14y ago
It was automated in the early '80s at a manufacturer of switches intended for aerospace. I'm sure it was long before that. You would need to be Thor to press the roller switch used in landing gear for example. They even were under glass vacuum chambers so the testing could be simulated at various altitudes.
potatolicious 14y ago
Regular testing that you'd expect to do many times, and that's part of your product development process, is almost certainly automated. But one-off tests are still squarely in the territory of Ye Poor Intern. I remember interning at an auto parts plant years ago where I spent two whole days stuck in a windowless lab where I laser-measured the precise diameter of a batch of motor shafts because there was suspicion of a defect from the supplier. It's the sort of mind-numbing repetition and boredom that threatens to liquefy your brain, and to this day gives me a greater appreciation for how good I have it writing code for a living :) (the fact that I was using frickin' lasers to do my job was novel for only the first half hour) Certain parts of automated testing are still manual too. In the aforementioned plant I was responsible for going into the oven and making measurements every few hours and measuring hundreds of things as part of the heat-cold cycle testing, even though the actual temperature shifting and vibrational stress was fully computer-controlled. Good times. Glad I'm in software now.
- hkmurakami 14y ago
  I have similar experience in an an auto-parts manufacturing setting, where they had tried (and failed) to develop an automated system for their defect testing. However, since the area was "visual defects" and not functional defects (this certain component was in a very eyeball-attracting part of the vehicle cockpit), it was discovered that humans are far more capable than this kind of affair than computer vision at this time.
rhplus 14y ago
The original Microsoft Surface team (the table-top one) released a video of their huge gantry driven stress testing robot a few years ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OTp_DjdjVE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OTp_DjdjVE
b0rsuk 14y ago
The Light Bulb Conspiracy is a great documentary about planned obsolescence. It starts with a printer programmed to fail (at the end of the movie Marcus downloads a homemade Russian driver which mysteriously repairs it). It deals with many more subjects and products, including titular lightbulbs (one of them is working for over 100 years already), ipads with irreplaceable batteries lasting 3 years, macs and other PC waste dumped in Africa as "used computers", degrowth, Bernard London, Phoebus, wooing consumers with short-lived products instead of forcing them (reminds me of STEAM). Unfortunately, only fragments of it are on youtube (except for Polish version, in full).
- JDGM 14y ago
  A fascinating comment, and now I want to watch the documentary! Could you clarify: "wooing consumers with short-lived products instead of forcing them (reminds me of STEAM)" There might be a typo or I might just be not reading it right, but I can't seem to parse this, probably due to confusion about who/what "them" refers to and what action is being "forced". I want to understand it though because the comparison to Steam could be an interesting one! (Assuming that is Valve's Steam - another slight confusion, I'm not used to seeing it written in all caps so perhaps you're referring to something else.)
  - b0rsuk 14y ago
    Okay, a clarification. The documentary states that planned obsolescence was invented in the US, in wake of the stock market crash of 1920's. Some economists wanted to find a solution for the depression. Initially one of the economists came up with the idea that planned obsolescence should be controlled by the government. Check out Bernard's London paper on the right of this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence The idea was that products would later be gathered and destroyed by a commission or something. A similar approach was used by Phoebus Cartel, which fined factories which made light bulbs lasting over 1000 years. According to the documentary, it still exists after multiple name changes. I don't remember the exact details, but the documentary then proceeds to show many commercials and famous designers who promoted new goods with short life span. Instead of the government making people give up their stuff and destroy it once time is up, the focus was on "low quality" and advertising. Here's the link to full polish version on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPPW8KM7eEU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPPW8KM7eEU It's dubbed, but you can hear many interviewed people talk in english. I'm a native polish speaker. Treat it as a teaser :-). Points of interest: - nylon stockings at 27:10 - at 16:10, an interview with a woman who met Bernard London. A few minutes later the section with commercials starts. "Planned obsolescence. A desire by the consumer to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary..." The documentary doesn't mention STEAM, but I think it's similar. STEAM is DRM in sheep's clothing. It comes bundled with so many extras (I can live without) such as friends lists, IM, automatic patching. These days, people are asking developers to publish on STEAM. They are seduced. As for games in general and planned obsolescence - after watching this documentary I think I know why so many games these days are linear, story-based and short.

kragen 14y ago

Consumer Reports has been doing automatic testing of this kind of thing for decades, so I assume not much.

rtkwe 14y ago

This kind of testing is usually done mechanically now. Much higher repetition, reliable, and cheaper. This sounds like a last minute rush job.

mzs 14y ago

It was automated in the early '80s at a manufacturer of switches intended for aerospace. I'm sure it was long before that. You would need to be Thor to press the roller switch used in landing gear for example. They even were under glass vacuum chambers so the testing could be simulated at various altitudes.

potatolicious 14y ago

Regular testing that you'd expect to do many times, and that's part of your product development process, is almost certainly automated. But one-off tests are still squarely in the territory of Ye Poor Intern. I remember interning at an auto parts plant years ago where I spent two whole days stuck in a windowless lab where I laser-measured the precise diameter of a batch of motor shafts because there was suspicion of a defect from the supplier. It's the sort of mind-numbing repetition and boredom that threatens to liquefy your brain, and to this day gives me a greater appreciation for how good I have it writing code for a living :) (the fact that I was using frickin' lasers to do my job was novel for only the first half hour) Certain parts of automated testing are still manual too. In the aforementioned plant I was responsible for going into the oven and making measurements every few hours and measuring hundreds of things as part of the heat-cold cycle testing, even though the actual temperature shifting and vibrational stress was fully computer-controlled. Good times. Glad I'm in software now.

hkmurakami 14y ago
I have similar experience in an an auto-parts manufacturing setting, where they had tried (and failed) to develop an automated system for their defect testing. However, since the area was "visual defects" and not functional defects (this certain component was in a very eyeball-attracting part of the vehicle cockpit), it was discovered that humans are far more capable than this kind of affair than computer vision at this time.

rhplus 14y ago

The original Microsoft Surface team (the table-top one) released a video of their huge gantry driven stress testing robot a few years ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OTp_DjdjVE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OTp_DjdjVE

b0rsuk 14y ago

The Light Bulb Conspiracy is a great documentary about planned obsolescence. It starts with a printer programmed to fail (at the end of the movie Marcus downloads a homemade Russian driver which mysteriously repairs it). It deals with many more subjects and products, including titular lightbulbs (one of them is working for over 100 years already), ipads with irreplaceable batteries lasting 3 years, macs and other PC waste dumped in Africa as "used computers", degrowth, Bernard London, Phoebus, wooing consumers with short-lived products instead of forcing them (reminds me of STEAM). Unfortunately, only fragments of it are on youtube (except for Polish version, in full).

JDGM 14y ago
A fascinating comment, and now I want to watch the documentary! Could you clarify: "wooing consumers with short-lived products instead of forcing them (reminds me of STEAM)" There might be a typo or I might just be not reading it right, but I can't seem to parse this, probably due to confusion about who/what "them" refers to and what action is being "forced". I want to understand it though because the comparison to Steam could be an interesting one! (Assuming that is Valve's Steam - another slight confusion, I'm not used to seeing it written in all caps so perhaps you're referring to something else.)
- b0rsuk 14y ago
  Okay, a clarification. The documentary states that planned obsolescence was invented in the US, in wake of the stock market crash of 1920's. Some economists wanted to find a solution for the depression. Initially one of the economists came up with the idea that planned obsolescence should be controlled by the government. Check out Bernard's London paper on the right of this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence The idea was that products would later be gathered and destroyed by a commission or something. A similar approach was used by Phoebus Cartel, which fined factories which made light bulbs lasting over 1000 years. According to the documentary, it still exists after multiple name changes. I don't remember the exact details, but the documentary then proceeds to show many commercials and famous designers who promoted new goods with short life span. Instead of the government making people give up their stuff and destroy it once time is up, the focus was on "low quality" and advertising. Here's the link to full polish version on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPPW8KM7eEU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPPW8KM7eEU It's dubbed, but you can hear many interviewed people talk in english. I'm a native polish speaker. Treat it as a teaser :-). Points of interest: - nylon stockings at 27:10 - at 16:10, an interview with a woman who met Bernard London. A few minutes later the section with commercials starts. "Planned obsolescence. A desire by the consumer to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary..." The documentary doesn't mention STEAM, but I think it's similar. STEAM is DRM in sheep's clothing. It comes bundled with so many extras (I can live without) such as friends lists, IM, automatic patching. These days, people are asking developers to publish on STEAM. They are seduced. As for games in general and planned obsolescence - after watching this documentary I think I know why so many games these days are linear, story-based and short.